NOW THAT IT'S ALL OVER....

A Guest Post by Wilson Crichton

Following his successful post last week, Wilson brings the figures up to date, with grateful thanks from Munguin.

On the subject of the Commonwealth Games, Munguin would also like to pay his respects to the people who organised what I think most of us would describe as a successful Games. 

It was ready on time; it came in on budget; it wasn't totally devoid of politics, but there was genuine warmth between athletes and fans, and a few reprehensible moments with two faced flags, etc, were soon pushed into the dust by the friendly warm atmosphere reported widely by the press and bloggers alike.

Congratulations to Glasgow, the committee set up to organise the Games, the City council and the government and a special word for Munguin's friend, Cabinet Secretary for the Commonwealth Games, Sport, Equalities and Pensioners' Rights. 

************

Now that it’s all over......

Last weekend driven by the BBC outpost in Scotland from the Commonwealth Games on the telly to stir the medals numbers about, I was quite surprised that there appeared to be a pattern (albeit fuzzy around the edges) that per capita smaller nations generally did better than the larger ones. I thought that larger nations may have had the advantage of “bandwidth” in that they could afford, and had the talent to invest in, a broader range of sports for their athletes. The smaller nations would be dead good in a few sports but may well be swamped by the larger's greater resource base once all the events were over.

I thought at the time I might have seen that with Scotland slipping from 3^rd to 4^th, about the time when the games moved on from the Velodrome and Tollcross Baths to track & field etc. By the way, did you see Mr. Bolt's race – my goodness, he's well named.

Here's the final medal standings:

Trad placng		Tot-gold	Tot-silver	Tot-bronze	Grand Total
1	ENG	58	59	57	174
2	AUS	49	42	46	137
3	CAN	32	16	34	82
4	SCO	19	15	19	53
5	IND	15	30	19	64
6	NZL	14	14	17	45
7	RSA	13	10	17	40
8	NGR	11	11	14	36
9	KEN	10	10	5	25
10	JAM	10	4	8	22
11	SIN	8	5	4	17
12	MAS	6	7	6	19
13	WAL	5	11	20	36
14	CYP	2	4	2	8
15	NIR	2	3	7	12
16	PNG	2	0	0	2
17	CMR	1	3	3	7
18	UGA	1	0	4	5
19	GRN	1	0	1	2
20	BOT	1	0	0	1
20	KIR	1	0	0	1
22	TTO	0	3	5	8
23	PAK	0	3	1	4
24	BAH	0	2	1	3
24	SAM	0	2	1	3
26	NAM	0	1	2	3
27	MOZ	0	1	1	2
27	MRI	0	1	1	2
29	BAN	0	1	0	1
29	IOM	0	1	0	1
29	NRU	0	1	0	1
29	SRI	0	1	0	1
33	GHA	0	0	2	2
33	ZAM	0	0	2	2
35	BAR	0	0	1	1
35	FIJ	0	0	1	1
35	LCA	0	0	1	1

So far, so ho-hum. The top 10-15 nations are mostly developed and wealthy, wha'dya expect?

Engineers when trying to compare disparate information may look to find some way(s) to normalise the data, to put it on a more even footing. The two most stand out elements in this data set for me are wealth and population. The wealth side of things is the basis for a PhD project, so, I'll concentrate on the population issue. As before, I found the countries' population from worldpopulationreview.com/countries/, and those not there I picked out from Google searches. The exception to this is the population of Cyprus, for which I took Philip D's number.

The medals standing seriatim looks to be based on most to least golds, then likewise silver and to bronze. So, dividing through by population in millions and sorting as described above, gives the following table:

	Population	Trad placng		Tot-gold	Tot-silver	Tot-bronze
1	0.1	19	GRN	10.00	0.00	10.00
2	0.1	20	KIR	10.00	0.00	0.00
3	5.3	4	SCO	3.58	2.83	3.58
4	2.8	10	JAM	3.57	1.43	2.86
5	4.5	6	NZL	3.11	3.11	3.78
6	0.8	14	CYP	2.50	5.00	2.50
7	23.3	2	AUS	2.10	1.80	1.97
8	3	13	WAL	1.67	3.67	6.67
9	5.3	11	SIN	1.51	0.94	0.75
10	1.8	15	NIR	1.11	1.67	3.89
11	56.1	1	ENG	1.03	1.05	1.02
12	35.2	3	CAN	0.91	0.45	0.97
13	2	20	BOT	0.50	0.00	0.00
14	7.4	16	PNG	0.27	0.00	0.00
15	52.9	7	RSA	0.25	0.19	0.32
16	44.6	9	KEN	0.22	0.22	0.11
17	29.8	12	MAS	0.20	0.23	0.20
18	173.6	8	NGR	0.06	0.06	0.08
19	22.4	17	CMR	0.04	0.13	0.13
20	37.8	18	UGA	0.03	0.00	0.11
21	1255.7	5	IND	0.01	0.02	0.02
22	0.009	29	NRU	0.00	111.11	0.00
23	0.09	29	IOM	0.00	11.11	0.00
24	0.2	24	SAM	0.00	10.00	5.00
25	0.4	24	BAH	0.00	5.00	2.50
26	1.3	22	TTO	0.00	2.31	3.85
27	1.2	27	MRI	0.00	0.83	0.83
28	2.3	26	NAM	0.00	0.43	0.87
29	21.3	29	SRI	0.00	0.05	0.00
30	26	27	MOZ	0.00	0.04	0.04
31	183.8	23	PAK	0.00	0.02	0.01
32	157.2	29	BAN	0.00	0.01	0.00
33	0.2	35	LCA	0.00	0.00	5.00
34	0.3	35	BAR	0.00	0.00	3.33
35	0.9	35	FIJ	0.00	0.00	1.11
36	14.5	33	ZAM	0.00	0.00	0.14
37	26	33	GHA	0.00	0.00	0.08

Looks surprisingly similar to the one I did on the 28^th. In terms of weight punching, the less populous, developed nations KO the larger by some margin. With one exception, the top 10 nations have a population of 5.3 million or less. The exception, as was the case on the 28^th, is Oz, double good on them.

Well behind Oz, England and Canada lead the charge for the larger nations (30 million and more) by a sizable margin with a gold score of c. 1+/- pm with their nearest challengers being half that. These two being perhaps the wealthiest countries left in the table.

The countries of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England, all did pretty well. However, on a gold per head basis: Scotland - 3.6 golds/ million Scots, Wales – 1.7 golds/million Welsh, Northern Ireland – 1.1 golds/ million Nor'n Irish, and finally England – 1/million English. 

Well that looks a bit different from the gushing guff we've been getting from our BBC outpost in Scotland crew. England may have had a great medal haul but as a nation they were the poorest at punching their weight. They got their bumps felt. Think if I was His High Excellency Grand Sports Poo-Baa Coe, I'd be wondering where the failure was in the sporting systems in England - definitely not in their athletes. Or, maybe he's just good at going around in circles, and being dismissive of Scotland. 

Super well done to Granada and Kiribati, in my view the winners of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Well done Scotland, a great games and a great result!

(As a matter of interest if the medal table was arranged in order of total medals, then on a population basis, the standings would be: Wales #4, Scotland #8, Northern Ireland #12 & England #18 – well done Wales in that case.)

Obviously, the traditional medal standings favour the larger nations and by inspection the wealthier ones too. But across one set of nations with broadly similar wealth, sporting culture, much of the same sporting environment opportunities, the smaller nations kick arse.

In my last wee note I was pretty scathing about the scunner BBC Scotland for letting themselves be invaded and subjecting us to that crew.

Sad Sack that I am, I wondered why BBC Scotland couldn't put together a decent commentary crew. Sure, put in a few non-Scots to add flavour and experience but why not? John Beattie easily could have carried it off as the leader of. Hugh Dan could have given us a bit of the Gaelic for those that have it and for colour for those of us who only have enough gaelic to order decent whiskey. BUT, then it struck me.....

was it as simple as

                                                                    they were

        scared

                                                                        someone unreliable might,

                                    on live TV

                                                                                                   to half the world,

that half which had

                                                shed the shackles of colonialism

            said

                                            YES,

                                                            its TIME.

Enough of the BS

                                                                    let's do it...............